Sunday, June 05, 2011

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

Assuming that was ever true, is it still true?

I suppose one could argue that it is still true in the sense that most jazz musicians still tend not to be very materially successful, and most parents still generally don't want their daughters to associate with freeloaders.

(One way in which it is certainly not true, or at least not complete, is that it doesn't take note of the fact that many daughters are now playing jazz too.)

But I'm pretty sure that the material interpretation is not what Ellington meant. I think, in his suave and elegant way, he was trying to say something about how jazz is connected to illicit pleasure, to rebellion, to the social underbelly, to life as an outsider. I think he was saying that jazz is the music of cool weirdos who are vaguely threatening in some way.

About Me

Durkin is a composer and writer living in Portland, OR. His first book, Decomposition: A Music Manifesto, was published in 2014 by Pantheon. He is currently working on a middle-grade fantasy novel.

Durkin is best known as the leader of the Industrial Jazz Group. He has scored several films and videos, including the award winning shorts “Fish” and “Lunch” by Sarah Jane Shute, and has been commissioned to compose for numerous schools, ensembles, and arts organizations. He has received grants from the American Composers Forum and Meet the Composer. Durkin's music has been heard on NPR, and performed at prestigious international venues like Amsterdam’s Bimhuis and Milan’s Teatro Manzoni, as well as throughout the US. He has a PhD in English Literature, was postdoctoral fellow at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy/Annenberg Center for Communication, and published an article (“The Self-Playing Piano as a Site for Textual Criticism”) in TEXT: An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies.